Preston Springs considered hot property

Cambridge Times

The selling agent for the historic Preston Springs building expects the property to be bought before year’s end, after being listed for $1.295 million last week.

“We already have seven tours with potential buyers set up for this week and we just launched our marketing campaign,” said Karl Innanen, managing director of Colliers International, a leading global real estate company.

The landmark at King and Fountain Streets was built in 1890 and served as a luxury hotel for decades. It later became a retirement residence, but has sat vacant since the 1990s, falling into disrepair. Redevelopment of the site has never been completed and the building’s previous owner, Guelph Financial Corporation, has fallen into receivership.

Innanen, a longtime resident of Cambridge, would like to see the process for redevelopment move forward.

“We knew that this building would be of a lot of interest because of its iconic position in town, as well as people's minds,” he said.

But many people are skeptical after years of planning and promises that never came to fruition.

“I hope they're prepared for a long wait,” one blogger posted in an online forum.

“Unfortunately, I have a hard time seeing something beyond a very marginal use… unless the Region and Cambridge come together to re-design this area,” another opined.

Many people cite traffic congestion and insufficient parking as roadblocks to making redevelopment of the five-storey structure feasible.

Coun. Karl Kiefer said the region needs to come up with a plan for the busy intersection and that a roundabout doesn’t seem to be the way to go.

“I did table a motion a few weeks ago to have the mayor and the CAO meet with the (former) owners (of Preston Springs) to find out what the plans for the future are. Also, the city recently bought the Old Post Office in the Galt core for a library/cafe project. Perhaps something similar can be worked out for the Preston Springs building.”

Coun. Donna Reid doesn’t see that happening in the foreseeable future. She realizes that people get frustrated, because it appears council is willing to invest in Galt, not Preston.

“But part of the reason we were able to do that is because we needed to have an expansion of the library anyway, so the money that had been set aside for the expansion went into it,” she said.

Local politicians would rather see the private sector take charge when it comes to Preston Springs.

“I mean its primary problem, of course, is it doesn’t have parking…I stretch my imagination and I really can’t come up with something that would be ideal for that location,” said Reid.

Innanen contends that there is a “great deal of capital that investors are willing to put into real estate” these days.

“The alternatives of investment are very poor right now; you either get very, very low, safe returns, or you take high risks in the stock market for higher returns.”